Thursday, June 19, 2014

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 20 June 2014 - 26 June 2014

I spent the last couple of nights entering movies from the New York Asian Film Festival and the Fantasia Festival in Montreal into the eFilmCritic database so... Yeah, I'm less excited about what's playing Boston.

I'd like to be, though; a new movie directed by Clint Eastwood is generally good news and people seem to like the Broadway musical about the Four Seasons. It looks like much of the cast is from the stage rather than the screen, which could make things interesting. Jersey Boys plays a lot of theaters - the Capitol, West Newton, Apple, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and the SuperLux. The other opening is Think Like a Man Too, which reunites the cast from the first, including Michael Ealy, Kevin Hart, Gabrielle Union, Meagan Good, Regina Hall, and more, for a wedding in Vegas. It's at Apple, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Fenway.

The action/adventure option is actually a smaller movie this week, The Rover, which stars Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson in the latest gritty post-apocalyptic movie from Australia. It's at Boston Common, Fenway, and Kendall Square.

Starting this week, Boston Common will not only be showing a classic on Sundays and Wednesdays (The Godfather, in this case), but recent hits at 9:30pm from Mondays to Wednesdays, with admission $3 and going to charity. This week the movie in question is Anchorman 2.

Kendall Square opens up three other movies in addition to The Rover. The one-week booking is Korengal, which is the rare documentary sequel - journalist Sebastian Junger revisits the Afghan valley and American soldiers he documented in the Oscar-nominated Restrepo to see how the war has changed them (and how it hasn't). Junger will actually be on-hand for three shows on Friday and two more on Saturday, along with Afghan war vets.

They're also opening another documentary, Ivory Tower, which looks at the state of American higher education, which often saddles students with a great deal of debt for highly impersonal education. On a much lighter note, there's The Grand Seduction, with Brendan Gleeson as a wily Newfoundlander doing what he can to lure a doctor (Taylor Kitsch) to his fishing town to help it land a business contract. Don McKellar directs, and Canadian institution Gordon Pinsent is also in the cast. The midnight show is The Goonies.

Apple Cinemas and Fenway both open Humshakals, a Bollywood comedy that looks like it features Saif Ali Khan, Ritesh Deshmukh, and Ram Kapoor playing characters with three identities each (I've seen no trailer, so I don't really know). iMovieCafe will also be opening Malayalam film How Old Are You? without subtitles on Saturday, which is apparently a comeback movie for star Maju Warrier.

The Coolidge Corner Theatre picks up Chef, and IFFBoston selection Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon, mostly in the smaller screening rooms. The midnights are regular visitors to the theater: A 35mm print of Wet Hot American Summer on Friday and Saturday, the monthly infliction of The Room on Friday, and the annual "Can't Stop the Serenity" fundraiser on Saturday, which benefits both Equality Now and Rosie's Place (bring non-perishable food items to be entered in a reaffle).

If you're not into the midnights, Sunday morning features the monthly Goethe-Institut selection from recent German cinema, the black comedy Finsterworld. Monday's Big Screen Classic is a 35mm print of On the Waterfront, while Thursday offers up a special screening of Walking the Camino: Six Ways to Santiago. Director Lydia B. Smith will visit to present and answer questions about her documentary where she follows and interviews many who make the 500-mile pilgrimage across Spain to Santiago de Compostela.

the Brattle also has guests with one of their documentaries, with co-director Carl Deal appearing at the 7pm shows of Citizen Koch on Friday & Saturday; his and Tia Lessin's film is about the fallout from the Citizens United decision, with particular focus on recent Wisconsin elections centered around breaking state employee unions. It runs from Friday to Wednesday.

There is another doc there this week as well: The Past Is a Grotesque Animal: A Film About Of Montreal is what it says on the tin, with particular focus on pop band Of Montreal's frontman Kevin Barnes; it plays 9:45pm shows from Friday to Monday. A live event ("For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf") takes the stage on Thursday.

The Museum of Fine Arts spends most of the weekend on the tail end of the "Limitless Possibilities of Black and White" series, with Dead Man (Friday/Saturday), Clerks (Friday), Killer of Sheep (Friday/Saturday), and Pi (Saturday/Sunday). Sunday also has an encore of the final film in the Hong Kong series, Kiwi Chow's A Complicated Story.

On Wednesday, The Roxbury International Film Festival, which features films by and about people of color, settles in. The opening night film is The Life and Crimes of Doris Payne, while Thursday's films include The Fade and A Culture of Silence. The festival runs through Sunday the 29th, with most screenings happening at the museum.

Somerville Subterranean Cinema looks like they've made some last-minute changes to their schedule, with The Retrieval off an a single show of IFC Midnight's Wolf on sale for 9:30pm Saturday (link here), which looks like a pretty good film from the Netherlands about a kickboxer falling into the world of organized crime. It's well-hidden, and I'm kind worried about this series right now.

The Harvard Film Archive begins A Tribute to Alain Resnais this weekend, with the centerpiece being the Archive's newly-acquired 35mm print of Je t'aime, Je t'aime, which screens Friday at 7pm and twice more next weekend. This weekend other Resnais show is The War is Over (Sunday 7pm). The rest of the weekend is Kenji Mizoguchi, including Victory of Women (Friday 9pm), Shaw Brothers co-production Princes Yang Kwei-fei (Saturday 7pm), The Famous sword Bijomaru (Saturday 9pm), The Love of Sumako the Actress (Sunday 5pm), and The Woman of the Rumor (Monday 7pm), which wraps the series up. All films are 35mm.

The Regent Theatre, Belmont World Film, and the Arlington International Film Festival present Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Return to Homs on Tuesday, and warn that the documentary on the fighting in Syria is not recommended for kids with its graphic content.

Under the stars, Joe's Calendar of free movies has Casablanca at the Boston Harbor Hotel on Friday, with Monsters University at the Esplenade's Hatch Shell at the same time. The Bloc 11 outdoor movie on Monday is Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

My plans? Well, nieces have a birthday party on Saturday, so I'm probably not going to make the Mizoguchi films or Wolf like I'd want to. Otherwise, I'm looking at The Rover, 22 Jump Street, The Grand Seduction, and maybe A Complicated Story.